


A Fine Romance

by kikibug13



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Bujold
Genre: Humor, Other, Spying, hermaphrodite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:50:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/pseuds/kikibug13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Byerly is visiting Beta Colony when he gets on the track of something that he'd rather report in... but he was on vacation, so there's some floundering whom to report it <i>to</i>. And then they send him an unexpected contact...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fine Romance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bliumchik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bliumchik/gifts).



> I spent entirely too much time trying to refresh on canon so it was really pinchy pinch hit. If there are some unpolished edges, it's the last-minuteness.
> 
> However? Writing Byerly was unexpectedly fun, and I'm really thankful for the chance to do so.
> 
> Thanks to kittydesade for the kind beta!

It wasn't my first time on Beta Colony, not by almost a decade. It wasn't even the most eventful one, I must admit.

But what it _was_ was the first time when I wasn't on anybody's short leash, nor at anybody's beck and call, not trying to keep anybody's interest, or whatever you might want to call it. I was actually on vacation.

Yes, that did mean that I had come upon some money that was sort of a promotion somehow. More power to me, right? Right. At least a chance to explore all the wonders of the damned place that I'd either only heard about or noticed in passing while somebody else was busy with something else and I got dragged along right through them or past them...

... well, at any rate. Since there was nobody to stay accountable to, I could get into as much trouble as I wanted to, and get out of it my own way. There's very little that a bit of witty confusion and ruthless abuse of the family's characteristic vivid brown, thick-lashed eyes couldn't fix. Especially if I mixed in some properly measured (well, one has to know the meaning of the damn codes, which had been a bit of additional homework the first time I went over, and I hate homework, but it's the kind that pays off) sexual availability and offensiveness.

I do offensiveness very well. Obnoxiousness, too. And when I put my mind to it, I can be charming enough.

Besides, Betans really prefer keeping things peaceful. After about half a false start, getting to be able to manipulate them enough for my purposes turned out to be rather simple. Not always easy, but it just doesn't take much to keep a Betan content. Or make him or her or it think they're content.

Even while I could have my own share of fun. With Betans. And non-Betans.

Mmm civilization. I mean, there are so many possibilities... one can scarcely begin to sort them out.

Not that I object to how things are on Barrayar. Too loudly. ... okay, so I do, never mind. I still go back there. I'm still Vor, it's still in my blood.

More's the pity that the social scene on Beta is far too extensive and evenly spread out for people to actually just _know_ about me after a while. Not that I have any problems reasserting my role as shameless and a clown; it comes naturally to me, after all. But it's easier at home, where I just have to show up somewhere and _somebody_ knows what to expect of me and primes the rest of the audience. Such a bother to always have to do it by myself. But at least the challenge is nicely refreshing.

Or so I told myself.

The worse part was that for all my full intentions of having _fun_, I ended up running into some... well, work.

I completely didn't mean to, but I would suppose that being in mixed company who don't _fully_ know about, well, Barrayar, I should have expected it.

It wasn't even a fell political coup planned by the Cetagandans. Or another revolt plan by the Komarrans. Well, that kind of figured; ImpSec tended to have those well under its eye.

It was a rather minor economical blow, orchestrated by some clever heads on Escobar. Minor, but pervasive. And, well, minor by galactic standards. If I had to deal with anything like it... ... Hah. Ludicrous.

Don't get me wrong, I am not the kind of person to meddle with other people's little vengeance plans. That is ridiculous, unless it means that _I_ get some temporary financing or even free food and drinks - only the best, of course, so long as somebody else is paying - but it was a question of, well, national pride.

Besides, I was there and I knew about it and I had to report it. Habits, you know. Part of the quirks of the job. Even if it usually just limited to reporting on my likes and into a structure I knew very well.

And since I'd come up on damn galactic _vacation_, all I could do is go to the embassy and ask whom to report _to_.

It would have made my contact back home cringe at the sloppiness, and it took a lot to evoke such ungraceful reaction from her. Damn, it made _me_ cringe, but what could I do?

Not that it went very well. I should have expected that the embassy would be thoroughly bugged and unsafe - or at least the parts of it open to the public ... like me. Maybe it would have been different if I hadn't been on a _vacation_. Somebody would have been warned, I'd have had a handler or contact or chain on command. Yeah, ImpSec loves chains of command... and information. And I don't. But that also meant that I couldn't get in contact with anybody who picked up on my recognition signs, and I was bounced out as having no particular business nor particular rank--

Just perfect.

Nor could I just _write_ back to Barrayar, let alone send a recorded message via normal channels, no matter how cryptic. Dammit.

It didn't help that over the following two days, I found even more details, without particularly looking. It was just my luck that I would dance in on people who just casually knew things. I mean, it _was_ sort of a job I'd taken up, but I wasn't supposed to be doing it just then!

Bel showed up almost precisely forty-eight hours after I'd crossed the threshold of our embassy. Not that I was likely to pay any particular attention to how and when the next new face to be made fun of showed up, in relation to my, and my planet's, Imperum's, business. Even if that face held a slightly haunting confusion or sadness, within the frame of brown, frost-touched curls. Soft lips, soft brown eyes, soft, smooth features. Not that I was looking, not that I ever am, too much trouble to try to be in a _relationship_, and it was difficult to with the whole demographic things, so why even try? And I was certainly not going to try to work around... all sort of prejudices, including my own - why try to deny them? - and attempt to consider in that context a hermaphrodite.

Which I might totally have missed in other places. But bless the Betans, they make such things abundantly and effortlessly clear. I'd found that out a couple of visits earlier.

At any rate, it was there, and definitely accentuating on its feminine side. Which did work very well. A couple of sentences and the combination between the haunted look and the rather sharp sense of humor had me leaning in to hear more; a couple of sentences more, and it dropped the first sign of ImpSec identification, making my jaw drop so hard it probably would have hit the table if that wouldn't look even more ridiculous than I go for.

A Betan for a contact? A _herm_, at that?

No, that couldn't be right.

I kind of brushed that aside, a slight conversational turn which made the brown eyes sharpen with appreciation of the humor, tinged with frustration, wondering.

I was totally not attracted to the intelligent, slightly snarky, mysteriously bound to Barrayar's _Imperial Security_ service, dammit, confident, slightly sad but not too much... ... hermaphrodite. I obviously couldn't be.

Instead, I made conversation. Between the two of us, it got to a state where, well, more sensitive souls would have been hurt. It is extremely satisfactory when that's picked up in the right spirit. Way too rare, and few can maintain the height.

Even fewer can maintain the height and not miss the signal I slipped in, another of the recognition routines for the communication that I knew.

It didn't miss that one, though. And returned the counter-sign without missing a beat in the retort.

So. Was I being set up? How could something like _it_ be the contact when, well, there had to be plenty enough Barrayarans in the employ of ImpSec who could probably do the job as easily?

By the third round of the little game, signal, counter-signal, and I drop it, that I played, it lost patience. Not in a major way, mind you. Just leaned back, eyes narrowing, then tossed the ambiguously, but still more femininely cut curls back, and slipped me a call card. In case I changed my mind about the whole not being interested part.

I still think it was murmuring about _fucking Barrayarans_ as it slipped passed me with an easy grace that made me think of porcelain tea sets and more depth than most people I ever got to talk with most days considered, let alone possessed.

The doubly layered statement had me puzzled while I waited for the other, the 'real' contact to get in touch with me.

Nobody did.

While little details added up.

No, I'm usually not that slow on the uptake. But I was on a vacation. That has to count for something, right? Or it'd better, or I needed a new, refreshed version of my brain.

The timing. The intelligence level which made plausible that it was employed by some level in intelligence.

The little ways that it did, in fact, know how to maneuver around Barrayarans, not explicitly, but both pushing and at the same time not pushing on prejudices that, yes, even I have. Being ridiculous sometimes had more impact if it resonated with things like that, of course.

I gave those thoughts about four hours to stew properly. Then maybe I got a tip off about the timing of the whole scheme, putting another twist of patriotic - shut up, I totally can be a patriot, so long as nobody actually finds out - feeling on my temporal constraints.

Long story short, I called Bel up. Let it set up the meeting between us; its turf (supposedly, but still, more its than mine), its knowledge about what areas might be safe to discuss things.

Its eyebrows raised, the beardless face looked... well. Not innocent at all, in a way that was... good, actually. "Which part of the discussion are we going to pursue, then?"

I shrugged, half-apologetically. "The more remote one."

"Of course."

Unsurprisingly, it was 'outdoors'. As much as anything resembling a walk was _actually_ out of doors, where Beta Colony, the acrid, arid sandbox was concerned.

Surprisingly, for the rather cramped tunnels, we had enough time to wander without much to talk about in other human presence so that I could talk.

It was good.

And still as damn interesting. And that part was totally unfair.

After all, I'm the product of my class. Clown, for it, and everything, but still Vor to the marrow of my bones. Even if I prove it far less flamboyantly than some. No Imperial Service for me. No risking my hide - it's rather unique, after all - and no spending long hours, or months, if one gets assigned ship duty, cramped in quarters with way too much testosterone and way too little, well, variety.

Yes, that means I'm often broke, not having the steady income and all that the service provides.

I get by.

At any rate, even if it was just telling the herm what it needed to pass on along its established communication channels (yeah, being cut off was not fun, I _do_ take care to always have more information of contacts when I travel, now), I still enjoyed the company, somehow.

Until its body stiffened very subtly, the easy not-exactly-banter stuttering. Just enough of a pause for me to trail off, and then I felt its hands go around my arm, the expressive alto so low as to be barely audible and so close to my ear as to suggest, well, intimacy. "I think that we might have drifted away from the area that was safe. There are pick-ups."

"I didn't see anything."

"Trust me, I'm very much aware of the cutting-edge technology."

The words got washed away as I saw two figures which... Well, the faces didn't wear the colors that any Barrayaran could probably recognize in his or her sleep, even if the Cetagandan invasion was... well, generations ago? Maybe not quite that long, but still, before I was born. At any rate, the two men who _casually_ loitered were ghem.

Handsome sons of bitches, too.

No, what I'd found out didn't seem to have anything to do with anything that the Cetagandan empire had done or would do or was likely to do. It _was_ an Escobarran ploy.

But, well, Barrayarans and ghem went together as well as, ah, flame and napalm.

Which was the kind of thinking that Bel's firm kiss on my lips interrupted, its body pressing against mine in a way that, well, was less disturbing, when wrapped around the element of surprise, than I would have expected.

I... after an instant, I tried to make sure that my face showed nothing of the startlement. Clowns know how to smile, after all.

Technology meant pick-ups, and, well, I didn't even know how good a hearing range those gengineered fuckers might have themselves. I couldn't very much ask what it was doing.

Then again, after about two seconds of that kiss, I wasn't sure I wanted to be asking much. The next kiss was decidedly my own initiative, and the press of the small, but round and soft and _womanly_ breasts had a familiarity to it that helped with the weirdness of, well, the rest of the equipment that it could, and possibly would, boast with.

"Maybe we should get somewhere that public displays of affection wouldn't be a problem at?"

"I'm afraid my home won't be entirely private enough to continue... our conversation."

"I think I covered the important parts that needed to be talked over." And I totally felt like an awkward teenager, my hand just so on the side of her... its. Its back.

The smile it shot me back was both sardonic and curious. "Now this will be an interesting intercourse then."

"Always, is, _dah_ling." No, sometimes I don't even try to resist.

The long, strong fingers tapped my cheek. "Yes. I think you'll do."

Whatever that meant.

Not that I wanted to ask, since the soft, full lips were on mine again.

~~~

The dark brows rise, enough to change the pain-lined face, and the gray eyes lift up from the showed holovid to the familiar twirls covering features that are getting only slightly easier to read under the paint.

"You will probably understand our interest, My Lord Auditor, when one of... Admiral Naismith's captains was associating with... one of your compatriots."

"I can certainly understand that. But..."

Yeah, Miles does think that Dag Benin's lips twitch up at that. "You did not expect the encounter to go that way?"

"You can say that, yes." The shorter man's surprise gets replaced by a shrug. "You do realize that with what will happen tomorrow night, this is not really relevant?"

"Yes. The honorable herm will no longer be considered a person of special interest to our security services."

"Not much of a threat either. What with the damage, and the outstanding service that it did... to yours."

"We are aware of that."

"Then... why show me this?"

"Well." Now there is definitely a smile. "It's getting deleted anyway. It would have been such a pity if it went to waste, considering that you're right here..."

"_Dag!_ If you keep that up, people will consider accusing you of possessing a sense of humor."

"Just mockery, I believe."

Miles shakes his head, eyes flicking again to the still images of Bel Thorne and _Byerly Vorrutyer_ in a kiss that suggests a continuation enthusiastic on both sides.

"Yeah, I have no clue. You can always ask if, if you're curious?"

"Oh, no. I just wanted to to make sure I got you once, with the whole pulling a rabbit out of a hat act."

"Earth humor? Really?"

"That I'm stuck over here doesn't mean I'm ignorant, Vorkosigan."

"Obviously not." A beat. "You didn't holotape _me_, just now... did you?"

"Well..."


End file.
